College and Research Libraries


276 College & Research Libraries 

ago is now mainstream librarianship." 
On the other, she doubts that there is any 
such thing as information science: what, 
if anything, it is remains, she says, a 
matter of debate. She is not the only one 
to be confused about information 
science, but confusion on this subject is 
not an advantage when trying to de-
scribe LIS education. 

Nothing she says suggests any reason 
for the multiversity to be interested in 
LIS programs. The picture she draws 
(apparently based on published docu-
ments, accreditation records, and visits 
to eight schools) is a depressing one, of 
small isolated units with undistin-
guished faculty members. The schools 
are unselective, admitting nearly all who 
apply. (She mentions Berkeley and 
UCLA as exceptions to this rule.) On 
their campuses, she thinks, they are not 
respected: they are seen as providing 
training rather than education, and are 
viewed as intellectually and profession-
ally inadequate. They are expensive, and 
bring in little outside support for re-
search. They have been attempting to 
transform themselves into schools for 
the information professions generally, 
but librarianship and information sci-
ence are diverging socially and intellec-
tually, as information scientists assert 
their intellectual superiority over tradi-
tionallibrarianship. Stieg does not even 
try to defend the LIS educational pro-
grams she describes in such unflattering 
terms; nor does she make any substan-
tive recommendations for improvement. 
She thinks the schools fit awkwardly in 
the multiversity, and expresses no con-
cern about the possibility that LIS educa-
tion might go elsewhere. (She mentions 
alternatives such as undergraduate edu-
cation and intensive workshops but has 
no recommendations herself.) She does 
say that it is hard to understand campus 
disdain for the "knowledge base" of the 
field, but only suggests vaguely that this 
may be because that "knowledge base" 
is essentially humanistic-a weird view 
of LIS, but she is thinking only of tradi-
tional librarianship, not of information 
science or of the, for her, nonexistent 
library-and- information science. Her ig-

May1993 

norance of information science is crip-
pling and dangerous; if others were to 
take her book as a competent account of 
the current state of research in LIS, it 
could be the end of LIS education in 
research universities. 

It has to be said that this is a pro-
foundly reactionary book, showing a 
strong distaste for the kind of research, 
development, and professional practice 
in information work that is gradually 
growing from deep roots in bibliogra-
phy and librarianship. It would be de-
plorable if the fact that the American 
Library Association published this book 
were taken to imply corporate endorse-
ment of its reactionary message. Stieg 
says her book is meant to clarify issues 
and increase understanding. It does 
neither. It will make work for deans, 
having to counteract within the univer-
sity its regressive and misleading ac-
count of the present and possible future 
of LIS education.-Patrick Wilson, Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley. 

Harris, Roma M. Librarianship: The Ero-
sion of a Woman's Profession. Norwood, 
N.J.: Ablex, 1992. 186p. alk. paper, 
$22.50 (ISBN 0-89391-941-1). 
The year 1992 has been called "the 

year of the woman," and, indeed, some 
significant events justify that label. It 
was a year of historic firsts, ranging from 
the election of four women to the United 
States Senate, the announcement that an 
African-American woman would be the 
"poet laureate" at the new President's 
inauguration, and a clear indication that 
the new First "Lady" will have a post 
that matches her intelligence and accom-
plishments. Reading Librarianship: The 
Erosion of a Woman's Profession against 
the backdrop of this supposed woman's 
year, however, brought a heavy dose of 
reality, reminding one how far librarians 
have come and how terribly far we, as 
individuals and as a profession, have yet 
togo. 

Roma Harris has written a book that 
will, I. expect by design, make some 
people extremely uneasy. She is unam-
biguous about her purpose and unapol-
ogetic about her theoretical orientation. 



This book is far more than simply 
another examination of the social and pro-
fessional condition of women who happen 
to be librarians; it is, instead, a richly tex-
tured, intelligently . argued, and surpris-
ingly moving analysis of librarianship. 
Harris has not only made a significant 
contribution to the literature on librari-
anship, but more importantly, she has 
widened the ongoing debate about the 
nature of female-intensive professions to 
include a consideration of librarianship. 

Harris uses a comparative approach to 
underscore the value of a gendered 
analysis of work. In addition to librari-
anship, she examines two other female-
intensive professions, nursing and social 
work, and draws fascinating parallels 
among the three. She argues, for ex-
ample, that each of these occupations 
suffers from similar status anxiety and 
that each is unsure of its intrinsic social 
value and is constantly vigilant about its 
image. Although none of this is particu-
larly startling (Harris herself points out 
that a major library journal monitors the 
representation oflibrarians in the popular 
media), she does not limit herself to a tired 
repetition of anecdotal evidence about 
negative self-image or low status. Instead, 
she trains her sights on the reasons for this 
lamentable situation. Simply stated, the 
problem is nothing more (and nothing 
less) than the fact that librarianship is 
gendered female . Librarianship's status 
is based far more on who is perceived to 
be doing the work than on the nature of 
the work itself. 

Harris begins by explaining and then 
dismantling two theories that have 
traditionally been used to justify (or ex-
cuse) the diminished status of female-in-
tensive occupations. The first, the "trait" 
theory of professionalism, presents a set 
of criteria by which "true" professions 
may be distinguished from all other oc-
cupations, creating an explicitly and un-
apologetically hierarchical system. It 
should come as no surprise to anyone 
that occupations which employ larger 
numbers of women than men fail to ful-
fill critical criteria; fail, in other words, 
to pass a rigid, tradition-bound defini-
tional test for "profession." 

Book Reviews 277 

While social scientists defend trait 
theory as an objective, gender-neutral 
set of criteria against which to judge the 
professional standing of an occupation, 
the "feminization hypothesis," the sec-
ond theory Harris analyzes, rests exclu-
sively on identifying gender-specific 
markers. The feminization hypothesis 
offers up a brand of occupational bio-
logical determinism which holds that 
"when large numbers of women are em-
ployed in an occupation, they leave their 
stamp on the types of work done and how 
the occupation is organized." Harris ac-
knowledges that the feminization hy-
pothesis has some value, at least insofar 
as it recognizes special characteristics of 
female-intensive professions. But she 
points out a critical flaw, one that under-
mines the merit of the theory as a way to 
explain a sex-segmented work force: the 
failure to take into account the pervasive 
and socially sanctioned devaluation of 
women's work. Harris identifies this as 
the critical determinant in explaining the 
low status of occupations such as librar-
ianship and nursing. 

Harris devotes a significant portion of 
her study to the strategies librarians, 
nurses, and social workers, both w9men 
and men, have employed in their in-
dividual and collective efforts to rede-
fine their occupations as professions. In 
addition to analyzing attempts to de-fem-
inize the occupation, a necessary pre-
.requisite to attaining full recognition as a 
profession, she examines the successes 
and failures of educational and credential-
ing initiatives, the struggles between 
workers' unions and professional associa-
tions for the collective soul of practitioners, 
and the paradoxical role technology plays 
as both a distinct marker of a profession 
and as a critical factor in the de-skilling 
of activities traditionally designated as 
women's work. In a passage both poig-
nant and humorous, Harris describes the 
linguistic contortions that gave rise to 
the appellation information scientist, a 
. change designed, apparently, to avoid mis-
taking some people who work in libraries 
for librarians. Harris makes it abundantly 
clear that, external forces notwithstanding, 
the "erosion" prominently mentioned in 



278 College & Research Libraries 

the title has its roots within the field of 
librarianship itself. Status anxiety, the 
endless debate over labels, the desire to 
re-gender (or, perhaps more accurately, 
de-gender) librarianship all contribute 
to the steady devaluation and wearing 
away (i.e. erosion) of attributes tradi-
tionally associated with women. Harris 
makes a compelling argument that it is 
just these female attributes, under siege 
and eroding, that set librarianship apart, 
that give it a unique character. 

Harris's most significant contribution 
to the debate over the meaning of pro-
fessionalism may well be her call to 
librarians to understand the value of 
women's work and female-intensive oc-
cupations on their own terms; not as 
some lesser version of "real" work, i.e., 
the work done by men. According to 
Harris, this new understanding would 
entail, among other things, "a (re)com-
mitment to service (based on a female 
rather than a male model)" and an expli-
cit commitment to "embrace a feminist 
analysis" of librarianship. While fully 
supportive of the demand to apply fem-
inist analyses to female-intensive oc-
cupations and having no quarrel with 
Harris's insistence that we break away 
from masculinist definitions of value, I 
find in her argument for a return to some 
sort of female principle a certain essential-
ist flavor that some may feel is divisive. In 
light of the overall persuasiveness of Har- · 
ris' s argument, however, this is a relatively 
minor point. What a pleasure it is to view 
librarianship through such a clear feminist 
lens.-Ellen Broidy, University of California, 
Irvine. 

Advances in Preservation and Access, 
vol. 1 (1992). Eds. Barbara Buckner 
Higginbotham and Mary E. Jackson. 
Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1992. 297p. 
$55 per year (ISBN 0-88736-787-9, 
ISSN 1063-2263). 
This annual, which complements two 

others in Meckler's recent Volumes in 
Library Administration and Practice, is 
an important and useful enterprise. At 
first glance, however, the prospect of 
another series, even on so important a topic 
as preservation, may dismay librarians 

May1993 

with overburdened serials budgets. That 
a substantial number of contributions to 
this collection have already appeared else-
where only heightens skepticism. Seven of 
the nineteen essays were either published 
as articles, condensed from reports to the 
Commission on Preservation and AccesS 
(CPA), delivered as papers whose content 
had already been expanded in a book, or 
issued as policies by the American Li-
brary Association (ALA) or the Society 
of American Archivists (SAA). They are 
available from these sources at minimal 
cost. 

That said, the present collection is 
nonetheless a valuable one. Librarians of 
all sorts have a great need for informa-
tion about preservation and access but 
limited ways of getting it. In their short 
introduction the editors justify a new an-
nual on the grounds that the enormous 
preservation challenge facing librarians 
and archivists in the next decades will be 
characterized by numerous choices and 
changes and that the series of volumes 
will serve to share promising strategies, 
communicate new ideas, and discuss 
timely issues. 

The first issue brings together useful 
information about the background, cur-
rent concerns and future directions of 
the preservation movement. The quality 
of the contributions is in general quite 
high. The focus is broad enough and the 
information solid and up-to-date enough · 
to enlighten both veterans in and newcom-
ers to the field. Indeed, given the general 
dearth of adequate education about pre-
servation in library schools, this volume 
could well function as a basic text, so well 
does it cover the central issues from his-
tory to future technologies, from brittle 
books to archives. 

Most of the contributors to this first 
collection have long experience and 
national standing in the field. Their re-
ports fall into six sections, each briefly 
introduced. Eight essays in two sections 
review the origins of preservation in the 
nineteenth century and its development 
into a coordinated movement in the 
twentieth. Although the essays in this 
section overlap quite a bit, together the 
authors assemble from several organiza-